VCCircle

iNurture, known for its ToonSkool brand, offers animation courses in colleges and universities.

GVFL Ltd, an Ahmedabad-based venture capital firm, has invested Rs 11 crore in iNurture Education Solutions Ltd. iNurture is a Bangalore-based company which offers animation courses to colleges and universities.

This is the second deal of GVFL in 12 days time, and the sixth investment from its Rs 450-crore SME Technology Fund. GVFL believes the deal will yield higher return on investment given the segment iNurture caters. “The team, the concept, the business model and growth strategy of iNurture implies multi-folding growth in couple of years,” Mihir Joshi told VCCircle. Without divulging further details, Joshi said that following the investment, iNurture will diversify to some other business verticals, and expand in overseas geographies.

iNurture, known for its ToonSkool brand which offers animation courses in colleges and universities, plans to utilize the funds to diversify the business and develop content for emerging sectors such as mobile & telecom, media, IT and financial services. It also plans to establish a content studio to develop e-content for all its courses offered and is targeting to launch its e-university by June 2011.

The company is currently associated with 20 education centres in India. It plans to tie up with more education centres in India and also expand overseas countries. It has already started operation in Turkey, and plans to expand in China, Vietnam and Africa.

GVFL has lined up four investments as of now and plans to finalise one deal in the next month. The target companies are in technology space, of which one company is in bio-technology and one in nano-technology. The companies are located in south and west India. 

GVFL’s prior investments from SME Technology Fund include Sahajanand Laser Technology Ltd, eInfochips, E-Cube India Solutions Ltd, Sebacic India Ltd and FairTech Engineering Services Ltd.